Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

What's the best poetry to learn by heart?My awe and envy of John Basinger, a man who has committed the whole of Paradise Lost to memory, makes me want to learn more poems. But where should I start?
Alison Flood Wednesday 26 May 2010 - guardian.co.uk

John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, which probably took longer to memorise than it did to write. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery, London

I am in genuine awe of John Basinger, who has learned the whole of Paradise Lost by heart – all 12 books, 10,565 lines and 60,000-odd words. He completed his feat in 2001 and can still recite it today; his achievement is so astonishing that the journal Memory recently conducted a study on him. Testing Basinger by giving him two lines from the beginning or middle of each book, the academics found he could recall the next 10 lines each time. He achieved it, they believe, by "deeply analysing the poem's structure and meaning over lengthy repetitions". They suggest that "exceptional memorisers such as [Basinger] are made, not born, and that cognitive expertise can be demonstrated even in later adulthood".

As well as awe, I'll admit to feeling a little jealous of Basinger, because I hardly know any poetry by heart. When my mum was at school, it was something they were made to do, and she can recite scads and scads; I just called her to check, and she could reel off Upon Westminster Bridge, Ozymandias, Adlestrop and lots of Shakespeare. And she says her grandmother, brought up in the west of Ireland, knew hundreds of poems by heart.
It wasn't something we did at my school, though, and I do regret it. The poems I remember are few and far between and usually incomplete. From childhood, I can summon up John Masefield's Sea Fever, Eleanor Farjeon's Cats Sleep Anywhere and Irene Rutherford Mcleod's Lone Dog in their entirety. (I went through a phase when I had trouble sleeping and was told firmly that learning poems would make me drop off; lots of bits and pieces remain from this period, from most of Edward Lear's runcible spoons to less than I would like of TS Eliot's mystery cat.)